One of the most famous images from the Dada period of art and literature comes from the brush of the Belgian painter René Magritte:

As you see, it’s a painting of a pipe, with the words written on it, Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

This is Not a Pipe

Absurd? Well, absurdity was the heart and soul of Dada. But it is, of course, a literal statement of fact: This is a painting. It is simply a painted image. No matter how much it LOOKS like a pipe, this is not a pipe. It is a painting.

Either the joke leaves you cold, or it delights you, as it does me, with its literal absurdity, its absurd literalness. So when I took a picture of my living room wall one afternoon and saw on the computer how it had come out, I was tickled. My very own Magritte!

If I knew how to put lettering right onto the image, I would do so — But as it is, I must content myself with captioning it:

THIS WALL IS WHITE

Because the joke, of course, is that the wall is white. What trick of the afternoon light washed it with color? I have no idea. But take my word for it: This Wall is White.

I love magritte for exactly the same reasons. That picture also makes me think about language – the fact that the object has nothing in it that makes it a “pipe” other than that we chose to give it that label. It could just as well have been called a “dog” and as an object been no different.

I think it’s only a white wall sometimes. At other times, in photographs, at a certain hour on a sunny day in October, it’s a rusty orangy wall. Aren’t you lucky? You may never have to paint your home again.

Ha! I was on Michele’s wavelength because I fully expected the caption to read, “This is not a wall.” It took me a moment to switch gears and figure out that though the wall looked orange, it was a trick of the light and the eye. That wall may indeed be white but the picture of it just goes to show that you can’t believe everything you see 😉

And to think I would have cropped it out if I’d been able to figure out how!
Your imaginations are more adventurous than mine. And I love your metaphor —
We’ll never know, will we? whether it took the plunge or not 😉